Ali in Italia: On the Sixth Day
One of the reasons I set my camera aside that day was this odd, new surging sense of living in the moment, observing “cleanly” without doing so the filter of a lens, “feeling” into it, and an attempt to capture it in writing as best I could.
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Ali in Italia – Red Specs, Flat days
As a writer – and I know a lot of creatives want to do the same with their rediscovered work – it’s all I can do, reading through my thirteen-year-old posts, not to edit them, not to correct language errors or grammatical slurring, and even the odd typo must stay, lest it changes history. Nostalgia…
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Ali in Italia – Scarves & Castles
The fourth day of the tour fell on a Wednesday, and we were driven by minibus all of the 12km from Santa Fiora down the mountain to Castel del Piano, a route I’d later travel at least a thousand times over the course of my life on the mountain.
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Pitigliano, Sovana, Saturnia, Santa Fiora
Was there a flash somewhere in the mitochondria, sent inward from the quick of my fingers clairvoyant to the brush against the stone in that town? Was there a place in me, anywhere, that recognised this village would soon become my home for the next eleven years?
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From The Eternal City to An Etruscan Hill Town
The sun angles in on the morning on this side of the town. Below, a severe ravine softened by a forest of owls and foxes, a weir surrounded by greens I thought impossible. The colours of champagne bottles, midsummer vine leaves, the eyes of cats…
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Ali Arrives in Italia
he flash of the Tiber ribboning toward the coast, stands of stone pines casting out lattice through afternoon fields and across roads, clusters of buildings sharpening into view from dun, sand, ochre into the first outlines that sing out, unmistakably, distinctly Mediterranean.
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Once Upon A Time…
…I embarked on a trip that changed the course of my life. The day the physical voyage began was on the evening of the 31st of May, 2012, as I boarded the 20:00 Emirates flight from Sydney. In actual fact, my journey had begun in late August the year before, when, at a loose end…
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Revisiting “Ali in Italia”
In 2012 I travelled to Italy on a women’s walking and writing tour. I was nearly 36 years old and it was the first time I’d ventured outside of Australia on my own. The experience was exhilarating, anxiety-inducing, and one of those pivotal deviations of the status quo and many of my readers will know…
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Arrowhead Talisman
Copper, sterling silver and a big, fat lapis: this was one of the last pieces I made in Italy, in 2023. Copper, lapis lazuli and sterling silver on braided leather cord.
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Welcome to the Fold
“Where I am folded, there I am a lie.” This quote by Rainer Maria Rilke was printed on a narrow slip of blue paper and tucked into a brown paper lunch bag, together with stickers and vibrant string and coloured cards as writing prompts, which was given to me in June 2012 at the very…
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Love and the Antipodes
I’m back on the perpetual blog after a long pause. I’ve merged my poetry blog with this one, simply because the theme I wanted was no longer available and a stripped back and simple, slower-paced life online as much as off it is what I need. I’m on a “mostly-break” from social media, mostly because…
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Ink Abstracts
After the heart series and a few other coloured inky doodles (which I’ll start posting here) I got into a series of ink abstract works, using predominantly monotone and metallic inks over wax. I’ve had these hung at Montegiovi for the last 3 weeks. They’re framed and signed and for sale for 150€. If you’re…
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Vibrant Heart series
The Heart Series is an exploration and dissection of the heart (mine) and what it holds at any given time, after the fallout of the last two years. It changes daily and through intuitive painting, and the flow of ink from the liminal spaces I, as a human being, don’t always have the capacity to…
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Exhibition at Il Miccio in Montegiovi
I’m a day away from packing up my joint exhibition with artist Luca Serafini. We held it at a fantastic pizzeria in Montegiovi, Il Miccio, with a garden boasting 360 degree views of Monte Amiata and the valley. But wait… I said pizzeria, right? Absolutely, and who would have thought? The restaurant and bar are…
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Ken
Ken Raffe, artist and mentor, died in June this year. His 92nd year. Due to tech glitches I didn’t hear the news till this morning, while staying a few days in Castiglione della Pescaia. I was buying crystals at a market at around the time he would have passed a month earlier, and so he…
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Held for Ransom
Time to speak up clearly about a few things, which will explain, in part, why my followers haven’t seen me create jewellery for almost two years, and to answer those of you who have asked why the blog was made private for most of the past year. Trigger Warning: the following content may trigger some…
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Wildflowers
I’ve been fairly prolific lately with art making and writing but with gorgeous summer weather calling me from the window to revel in its green and flowered beauty, working indoors or in front of a computer hardly feels fair to the soul. Notwithstanding the insane levels of poplar tree pollen seeking sensitive throat and eyes,…
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Mountain Dreams
Back in 2019, after a brief escape to Australia and the last time I saw and held my parents and Aussie friends in person – just a handful of months before the pandemic hit – I’d created a photographic exhibition of Australian native trees called The Map of a Notion of Home. I’ve lately revisited…
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Rituals, Art, Language
I’m back! It’s been a while since the last post. Much of my screen time tolerance gets used up on translation work, so blogging and much of anything else online gets put aside in favour of mental (and ocular) rest. Not that a great deal of excitement has taken place in my life – likewise…
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New Year Rituals
I hope everyone’s Christmas was as enjoyable as can be under the circumstances. I fully intend on going kitschly unabashedly overboard with all the Christmas and New Year glittery jazz next year to make up for this year. I’ve been supremely lax in my Christmas greetings messages this year, taking till now to respond to…
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Ikigai
I was going to title this with “Greetings From The Bones Of The Year”, but given the year it’s been, collectively, it sounds ominous, morbid, melancholic. The year that is drawing towards the dawning of the Age of Aquarius (Jesus, that tune has been stuck in my head for months!), is also the decidedly Mayan…
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Ink Art Dream Journals & Sketch Books
What do I use my dream journals for? Everything from gratitude books and evening journaling. Jotting down weird dreams., Recipes. Notes. Letters. The beginnings of stories. My poetry plants its earthly origins within their pages…
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Stellar Objects
I have always been fascinated with the life and death of stars. The mind-bending size of them, and the length of time it takes for their light to reach us. That, in spite of their size and grandeur, they’re finite, like the rest of us.
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Portals
“Portals” was the second work I made after I’d returned to Italy. I’d finished it on the anniversary of my grandmother’s death in June, and that evening a moth flew in through the window and landed on the portal
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Koi
So now I’m back on deck here, I’ll begin with the first work I created when I returned to Italy.Creating this was the poetry of freedom, when I had run out of new words to say the same thing. All my artworks are available for purchase. I also accept commissions, big and small. If you’re…
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Gratitude
I’m back on the blog, first of all to acknowledge and give thanks to my family and friends who came through for me this year, for the messages, emails, film and music suggestions, long conversations, vocal message postcards, gifts of kindness, advice, friendship, and emotional support of all kinds. From the halls of my heart…
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